End of Life – PHP version 4 webhosting

PHP version 4 was officially retired 8 years ago and no longer receives any kind of official patches or support. To preserve functionality for our resellers who have customer services requiring PHP v4 we have maintained our own patch subset for PHP v4 since 2008.

Our volume of PHPv4 websites has now reached a low enough level that it no longer makes business sense to maintain our PHPv4 Webhosting services. Effective 1 August 2017, we will no longer offer / support PHPv4 websites.

We recommend to all customers to either upgrade their websites to PHPv5, PHPv6, or PHPv7. You can select the different version from our webhosting panel to temporarily change your php version to see how it may affect your website. We would recommend trying PHP 5.2.

If you need help with migration we recommend placing a RackCorp support ticket. Any sites still operating on PHPv4 will be automatically upgraded to PHPv5.2 on August 1st. Please note there is a VERY HIGH chance that this will break sites that were built for PHPv4.

CVE-2015-0235 “Ghost” Linux glibc vulnerability

For those that missed it, CVE-2015-0235 (aka Linux Ghost) was announced today which details a glibc library bug that is still on many Linux distributions. glibc is used by many applications including webservers, mail servers, php applications etc.

The specific bug was in the gethostbyname() and gethostbyname2() functions (hence “ghost” name!), so only applications that call these are potentially vulnerable. Even then, there is limited scope for exploitation, but there already has been a PoC for the Exim mail server developed so it certainly is possible (given the right conditions). Luckily, these two functions lack IPv6 support, so many newer applications and services have chosen to stop using these functions, and instead use IPv6-enabled functions instead. As has been seen however, some popular ones such as Exim do still use the older IPv4-only functions.

The bug itself has been around since 2000, and was inadvertently patched in August 2014 without realising the implications. Unfortunately since the security issues were not detected at the time, many Linux distributions didn’t back-port the patch into Linux distributions. This is what has occurred today.

Accordingly, we have now taken the following actions:

We will be taking the following actions that may result in a few minutes downtime for some sites tonight:

In addition:

In terms of customer patch cycles, we are treating this as a critical bug for some customers, and moderate (normal patch cycle) for others depending upon the attack vector surface area. All affected customers will have received an email accordingly. If you are unsure of the impact for your specific services, please raise a support ticket accordingly.

Additional useful resources:
Ars Technica Writeup on Linux Ghost
gethostbyname() vs getaddrinfo() by Erratasec

RackCorp welcomes Melbourne to our global network

We are pleased to announce high-availability premium virtual servers via in Metronode’s recently completed Melbourne 2 Data Centre located in Victoria, Australia.

This data centre is unique in that not only does it allow us to offer hosting and server products in a location geographically convenient to Southern Australian users, but provides very high security and energy efficiency features.

Our Melbourne point of presence is ideal for customers in Victoria, South Australia and especially Tasmania who are seeking the best latency and speeds to their websites.

RackCorp’s in-house developed management system and global network

Combined with Metronode’s Tier 3 Rating means our Melbourne site is ideal for customers who require a higher level of redundancy and reliability

What Exactly is a Tier 3 rating?

A specification defined by both the Uptime institute and ANSI/TIA of USA which contains formal requirements for the design of a data centre.

The rating covers items such as

• Site space and layout
• Physical infrastructure such as cabling, site security, access control and power.
• Reliability rating of the sites infrastructure
• Environmental efficiency and Management, both internal and external

Very few data centres in Australia are Tier 3 rated as a number are just designed to best-practise rather than an industry recognised specification.

Energy Efficiency – the future key to reliable web hosting

A commonly cited metric to measure a data centre is its PUE (power utilization efficiency) rating. The lower the PUE, the more efficient the cooling, better the reliability with less chance of outages and the lower the energy costs.

Metronode’s unique ‘BladeRoom’ data hall design and Melbourne’s cool climate enable a very low PUE of 1.1, one of the lowest possible and best in Australia.

RackAdmin – RackCorp’s in-house developed web hosting and network management platform

One of the key principles behind our company is emphasis on in-house custom developed solutions based on open source software.

A bespoke open source foundation provides us with

• Maximum reliability as bugs can be patched before official fixes are available
• Maximum performance thanks to streamlined and lean code
• Maximum flexibility and extensibility to meet our customers and our own specific needs
• Minimising cost and licensing which helps keeps prices competitive

These principles form the basis on which is why we built RackAdmin, the backbone of our company since foundation. A custom, in house developed management platform which provides end-user account management, option and service provisioning including reseller management and geo-location and automated billing. All within a slick and easy to use interface and an API.

Rackadmin provides is a streamlined,slick and easy to use solution to manage your web hosting needs

Read more »

We have moved!

As you may or may not be aware, we have recently (recent being 6 months ago!) moved our office. After 9 years of residing on other end of Sydney CBD, we are now streets away from Sydney landmarks, Harbour Bridge & Opera House.

The project planning room

For more happy snaps check out our Facebook album

In other news, the team is currently busy working on revamping our Rackcorp website! More details to come, watch this space.